Value-based Education: Translating our Education to Reality

Earlier today, I was at a certain
construction site with some other members of the group doing our bit to get the
work going. Our work precisely was to assist the engineers on site couple and
install a big fabricated tent.

While we were standing around letting the
engineers do their work, a conversation had ensued between myself and a couple
that stood close to me. The husband was pretty worried first that the footing
of the tent did not look too sure to be able to carry the weight of the
materials to be assembled with it considering the number of years that it is
expected to last. The man casually commented that the materials used to
fabricate the tent did not actually look so “foreign” and that these kinds of
things should be fabricated in Nigeria.
It was at this point I found myself plunging heatedly into the conversation.

First of all, I noted that yes, it was
possible to do such here in Nigeria,
but we do not have people-or more appropriately-graduates with the required
skills, knowledge base and also mind set required to accomplish such a task. I
mentioned that this situation was very much connected to the kind and system of
education currently available and mass-marketed in Nigeria which does not equip,
empower or even inspire one to creatively convert his education into value.

I said that, in Nigeria, the typical graduate
would hardly think about starting a business or running a manufacturing firm, but would be more
pre-occupied with thinking about securing a job
(whether good or bad, high-paying or not) as long as they would get some
pay at the end of the month. For me, there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting a
job or desiring to have one. I do have a regular day job, but I do business in my
spare time. But my frustration lies in
the fact that, for me as a trained Biochemist, I could hardly figure out (as at
when I was in school, and a few years after graduation) how I could use my
knowledge as a biochemist to start a business, a food or beverage making
company, a brewery, or something related. All the reality that seemed possible
to me was to join the band-wagon and hit the streets in search of a white
collar job.

It still beats me that in all my four solid
years in the university studying biochemistry, I never got to synthesise an
enzyme, attempt making some fruit juice, wine or soft drink concentrate,
anything at all. All I remember doing was compelling myself to study some huge,
lousy chemical structures as well as some chemical pathways that I sometimes
found confusing or somewhat irrelevant.

In my conversation with the couple I
mentioned earlier, it was clear to us that we really did not have an excuse to
not be able to fabricate or manufacture things. For instance, Japan revolutionized
their industry by taking painstaking years–less than a decade–to understudy certain
developed nations, their industry, their technology, everything. Today, when it
comes to industry and technology, Japan is a force no-one can ignore.

Sadly and unfortunately, as Nigerians, we
are not even doing things to help ourselves. In this regard, our governments
are busy wooing foreign investors to come invest in our economy; yearly pumping
out thousands of students to several foreign institutions under federal and state
scholarship schemes with the hope that someday they would come back to develop
their motherland–of which 90% of the time never come back to the country after
their study is over.

As long as our educational system remains
the way it is, Nigeria and Africa will perpetually remain underdeveloped. As long as a student cannot while in class
envision how he would utilise his education in order to harness resources in
order to create value, make legal profit and contribute meaningfully to
societal development, then we would continue to have a high and ever-increasing unemployment rate. Personally I feel disappointed at times when I imagine
that I could use knowledge as a biochemist to begin a food manufacturing plant,
a brewery, or perhaps a juice concentrate factory. But unfortunately, in school
the education I received could not possibly empower me with the knowledge,
skills and mindset to accomplish such tasks. Today, I am a Salesman by
profession and a practicing entrepreneur, but only a biochemist by educational
qualification.

In developed nations, kids while in school
learn how to utilise their learning to develop concepts, products, software,
technology, name it, that would not only fetch them monetary value, but also
enable them add meaningfully to society. Here, all we are trained and prepared
for is to get set to join the job searching “army” after graduation with no
plan or idea how to translate or convert our education into products, services,
and technologies, and worst of all, no capacity to produce. All we do is import
everything and every technology, to the point that we have even become addicts
to a lot of them. Like our generators, smart phones, cable decoders, tv sets,
etc.

I
think it is time that our young people realize that the government and relevant
corporate bodies may sponsor an education, but creating value is entirely up to
us. Utilizing our knowledge and skills to produce, fabricate and industrialize
will be dependent on how much we are willing to get hands-on, study beyond the
“cramming” of our traditional education and unlock the creative geniuses inside
of us to create products, concepts, and technologies that would transform our
nation from being a technology importer and foreign investor seeker, to a
technology exporter and foreign investment investor.